I am a current-affairs columnist and film critic for The New York Post, for which I have covered everything from political conventions to film festivals. I have also contributed reviews and essays to The Wall Street Journal. Follow me on Twitter: @rkylesmith.

Is Steve Jobs A Creative Genius, Or A Tyrant?

As the Steve Jobs era ends, it turns out that the famous Apple “1984” ad was more prescient than anyone suspected at the time. Except Steve Jobs wasn’t the woman throwing the hammer. He was Big Brother — a high-tech giant revered by slackjawed multitudes from his domineering position on every video screen. And like Big Brother he was a spooky, weird control freak who cultivated not so much fans as thought-slaves.

Big Brothers love to unify us around their selves and their image. They love to make it look as though they, alone, are responsible for all good things. (Daimler makes some nifty products too — quick, picture its CEO. But you don’t have an image of Jurgen Klummsdorf or Hans Sitzkrieg in your mind, do you? You don’t even know the guy’s name.) No, Steve Jobs didn’t invent the iPod. And what is the iPhone except an iPod Touch that’s been wired up? What’s an iPad but a really big iPhone?

As with all tyrants, Jobs made the absurd seem routine. A few months ago I walked by my local Apple store — a gleaming transparent palace that looks like a drop of sweat from the gods frozen into a perfect ice cube as it fell to earth — and encountered a long line of what (in an only slightly different context) George Harrison termed the “Apple Scruffs.” The ragged fanboys camped outside the headquarters of the Beatles’ Apple Corps record label were now the wired-up, tech-drunk, expensively bespectacled masses of the strenuously clued-in. The iPad 2, was about to be released.

But not that day.

The new gizmo wasn’t to be sold until the following day, yet the conformist crew was lining up nearly 24 hours in advance, with their folding chairs and their coolers, in order to have the privilege of throwing away a day’s wages plus the cost of a device on something (if they were this devoted) they already possessed, albeit in a version a micron or two thicker and a supermodel’s eyelash heavier. Also, the iPad 2 has cameras for video chatting – much like the cameras on the iPhones every Apple Scruff already possessed (and every minimally-improved version of which they had likewise queued for).

Across the street, where Best Buy would be selling exactly the same item at exactly the same price at exactly the same time, there was no cult, no fever, hence no line (and no wasted productivity). That’s right: Fanatics would rather waste 24 hours advertising their zeal at an Apple store than simply walk into a Best Buy. Five hundred years ago, the Apple Scruffs would have been mortifying their flesh as a Jobs-like cleric urged them on.

In the 1984 commercial, Big Brother speaks of “a garden of pure ideology, where each worker may bloom, secure from the pests of any contradictory true thoughts.” Can there be a better description of your local Apple store, with its fresh-faced armies of uniformed nerdbots kindly doling out status-defining electronic accessories to slavering coolhunters, than “a garden of pure ideology”? At the stores, the Cult of Jobs commands “Full loyalty, no negativity,” said the headline of a recent Wall Street Journal story that also revealed that (as instructed in a hefty manual approximating the bulk of “The Marx-Engels Reader”) that the maximum leader requires “intensive control of how employees interact with customers, scripted training for on-site tech support and consideration of every store detail down to the pre-loaded photos and music on demo devices.”

Apple store workers are paid about the same as any retail sales clerks — nine to 15 bucks an hour — so why is Apple able to attract such a savvy work crew, the kind who couldn’t even imagine themselves scanning cappuccino makers at Bed, Bath and Beyond? Because the kids are under the impression that making a good showing at an Apple store could lead to a job with corporate in Cupertino. This seems about as likely as the guy who sells pennants outside Yankee Stadium being tapped on the shoulder by Joe Girardi: “Grab a bat, you’re pinch-hitting for Jeter.”

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By satire you mean that you thin Mr. Smith was being ironic, that by seeming to attack Mr. Jobs and the Apple Corporation through facile and superficial critiques he is actually mocking others who dislike those two for the wrong reasons, for facile and superficial reasons. Mr. Smith never discusses the substantial issues such as the strengths and weaknesses of Apple products, the structure of culture of the corporation, are what lessons might be learned, either positive or negative, from Mr. Jobs’ own life. Instead he focuses on how Mr. Jobs’ and Apple are present or perceived and he himself feels about those.

You are assuming that because Mr. Smith says that he is a film critic that he would be aware of literary irony and thus employ it in a critique of Apple and Mr. Jobs. However the true irony is that Mr. Smith, film critique though he be, is completely devoid of irony, and literature it would seem, and is in fact criticizing Apple for all of the insipid and narrow reasons that he says.

Unless of course it is you who are being ironic, that you understand that Mr. Smith means exactly what he says, and that the only satire is your suggestion of satire and of course Mr. Smith’s own unintentional, and unaware self-satire.

Kyle, clearly you know nothing about brand marketing or product positioning. Apple choose to be a luxury electronic company. Like any other luxury good company, Apple projects an image so it can charge a premium. Why do you think Rolex watches cost more than Casio? Why is Cadillac cost more than Chevy? Apple is not Microsoft. Apple is not IBM. Apple is Rolex.

Kyle, FYI: I’m a former Apple employee who worked at the main campus in Cupertino, and I personally know over a dozen people there who started in Apple Retail.

The ratio of applicants to retail jobs makes it a very good pre-qualification filter, and anyone who can put a year of work at an Apple store on their resume has a substantial advantage when it comes to applying for any job at Apple Corporate.

As for your similarly ignorant characterization of SJ as a “spooky, weird control freak”, I can tell you from direct personal experience that we didn’t walk around the campus quivering in fear that we might run into him.

Steve was the final filter for what we shipped, and anything to get out the door for the first time, his approval was required. However, it wasn’t the rank-and-file engineering staff who were presenting the work to him, it was our directors and VPs, and the products had already been through a great deal of revision and refinement before they were ready for that test.

A lot of things that he turned down, he would still tell the team’s management that their work was good, but there’s a limit to how many things we could do. It wasn’t like he was attacking or belittling anyone if their project didn’t ship.

This is classic. You know Smith is an intellect from the way he references 1984. What’s really clever about his writing is the way he was able to tie in the irony of apples 1984 ad. What confuses me, however, is that he virtually explains all of his witty cult and modern classics metaphors so crassly but failed to explain his loose reference to IBM through Microsoft CEO bill gates. Rather confused here but it may just be a tiny misinformed mistake. Please don’t let that undermine the them of this well researched artical

This is classic. You know Smith is an intellect from the way he references 1984. What’s really clever about his writing is the way he was able to tie in the irony of apples 1984 ad. What confuses me, however, is that he virtually explains all of his witty cult and modern classics metaphors so crassly but failed to explain his loose reference to IBM through Microsoft CEO bill gates. Rather confused here but it may just be a tiny misinformed mistake. Please don’t let that undermine the theme of this well researched artical. For those unable to understand it I shall sum it up for you, as I too read modern classis. *Apple is evil in part to being controlled by the anti Christ Steve jobs. The lines at the apple store are too long. People who use apple products (unlike our saviour, Smith) are mindless idiots. don’t worry though they can’t get angry with facts.*

“Some of you sound like the kinds of fellows who go on message boards to vent about how the movie was no good because the hero’s watch was on his left wrist in one shot and on his right wrist in the next.”

Seriously, Kyle? That’s your response when it’s pointed out that you didn’t fact-check your article? I hope none of your editors are journalists.

Your argument would not have remain unchanged, Kyle; you used the 1984 commercial because it was a convenient way to advance your message that Jobs is a hypocrite, without really addressing any of the content of what he’s done, or the original message behind the commercial.

At best, your use of it in this case demonstrated a lack of research or fact-checking. At worst, you used it knowingly incorrectly, hoping your readers wouldn’t notice. And of course, you didn’t stop there; you omitted crucial iPad 2 upgrades, and lied about the others, apparently as an excuse to throw more sarcasm Apple’s way.

Your conjectures about the Apple Store, its customers, and its workers are all nonsense, tinted irrevocably by your deep-seated hatred of Apple and its customer base.

I’ve sold Apple products before at retail. Re: Best Buy, there’s a difference between an Apple authorized reseller, and an actual Apple Store, in terms of product. When something is scarce, the Apple Store is going to get far more of them. Especially when it comes to a product launch.

The intervening weeks and months proved how difficult it was to reliably find the popular iPad 2 configurations, given that the device outsold even Apple’s optimistic estimates. Those people waiting in lines proved themselves much more well-informed than you. If half of them had been waiting at Best Buy instead, they would’ve almost certainly had to come right back to the Apple Store the next day, probably too late to get an iPad.

And if they hadn’t waited at all, well, they would’ve been beaten to the punch.

And as far as the experience of waiting, here’s something to consider, Kyle: why is it so offensive to you that people are excited about a company’s products?

As far as the Apple customer base, the ones I’ve dealt with couldn’t be farther from “slavering coolhunters.” Usually, they’re parents, or grandparents, who have used their friend’s, or their sister’s iPad, or iPhone, and they simply liked it better than other computers they’d used.

It isn’t 2003 anymore. Apple isn’t the counter-culture, Hollywood choice it once was. There aren’t enough trend-desperate liberals in the world to make Apple as successful as it is today.

Your title is a false-choice. Your narrative is dogged by a omissions, misrepresentations, and contortions, through whatever stingy lens you’re using to look at Apple and everything in its vicinity.

hmmm… yet another person who is completely obsessed about this “cult” thing and “cool” factor.

There are only two groups of people I know of that are so totally obsessed with what other people find “cool” – Apple bashers and teenage girls.

The adults I know don’t much care what their neighbor is wearing or buying or what they think is cool. I have a neighbor who has a teenage girl who seems to care, a lot.

Of course we’re never given an “insight” to the Cult of Softies are wel? They are more numerous and more vocal in forums across the web. They will never ever own an Apple product. Yet we can find no articles attacking them based on their “religion”.

A long time tennis fan here and for years I’ve followed two writers. You don’t know the word “fan” until you read the comments in these articles. The camps are ferocious and the authors are attacked relentlessly.

The one thing you will not find are these journalists attacking the fans of any camp. They know it’s coming, they know it’s going to get personal and ugly, but they’re professionals. They’re what we call journalists. They rise above it and maintain a level and fair view.

This article? Yellow journalism. When you have an agenda there’s no other way to put it.